JJUA55203U Legal Scientific Theories,
Methods and Writing

The course, Legal scientific theories, methods and
writing is inspired by the American tradition of building
the training of future lawyers around a course in Legal
Research and Writing (LWR)- However in contrast to the
American model, the course offered at the Faculty of Law has a
stronger focus on research theories and methods and the writing of
academic articles.

The MA course will aim to introduce the students to the very
latest research techniques and ideas to enable them to write
independent articles of scientific quality. To ensure that the
course will build on the latest research results, the course will
be taught by internal VIPs who will present their own research and
the tools used to conduct it. These presentations will form
approximately half of the course while the other half will be
composed of the students researching and writing their own academic
article and being subjected to different types of review and
feedback.

The MA course on is an advanced version of the BA course on
Retsvidenskabelige teorier, metoder og skrivning. As an
advanced course the MA version will be taught in English (although
this can be changed) and introduce the students to the best
international scholarship in the form of cutting-edge legal
science, its theories, methods and conventions. While the course
will be taught in English, students will be able to submit their
final project in either Danish or English.

The course targets students interested in legal research and aims
to bring them up to a level at which they are able to,
independently, find and delimit a suitable research project and
plan and execute a plan to complete this research. This ability is
not only relevant for students who chose to become researchers but
also for other types of professional trajectories most of which
will include legal research and drafting. During the course, the
students will become familiar with a range of different theories
that are currently hotly debated in the scholarly literature.

These theories include legal theories as well as social science
theories that aim to explain the development of the law: Legal
cynicism, legalism, regime theory, legal orders theory, law and
economics, law and society and field theory. The approaches
presented to the students may change to reflect what research is
being undertaken at the Faculty of Law.

This course is part of iCourts Excellence Programme
(iEP) – International Law and Courts in a Global World,
see 'Remarks' below.

Skills
• Structure and complete independent legal analysis and writing
based on scientific theories and methods
• Independently locate and identify legal research objects
• Build a legal scientific argument and situate it in a wider
state-of-the-art

The reading material of the course (750 pages) will consist
partly of articles written by the legal researchers who introduce
the students to their work. As such there is no fixed curriculum in
a classical sense.

For each session taught by a researcher from the Faculty of Law,
the students will read one or two scholarly articles on which the
researcher will base his or her talk. The researcher will take the
students through the entire process that preceded the publication
of the article (getting the idea, writing the article, going
through peer review etc.).

Besides this literature that will compose about half of the 750
pages, the students will read central chapters of Mark van Hoecke’s
Methodologies of Legal Research (2011) as well as Howard
Becker’s seminal book Writing for Social Scientists. This
will account for about 200 pages. The rest will be selected by the
students themselves as they prepare and execute the writing of
their own articles.

The main learning activities
in the course are based on working with a scientific text and
relating ones own research to the relevant theoretical and
methodological perspectives as well as
giving/​receiving/​implementing feedback.

The process towards a finished scholarly article will be divided
into three different sections that are designed to follow the
learning objectives of the course and provide progression
throughout the semester:
- the first third of the course will be devoted mainly to becoming
acquainted with the legal scientific theories and methods upon
which the course builds. The invited VIP will present their own
work and the course coordinator will situate this perspective in a
wider theoretical and methodological landscape.
- the second part of the course will focus on the students finding
and delimiting their own research objective.
- the third part of the course will focus on finishing the academic
article.

While these three sections seem at first glance distinct, in
reality there will be significant overlaps driven by the written
assignments given to the students in which they will slowly move
towards writing their article. Besides these elements, the learning
activities will include group work, peer feedback and
presentations.

Please observe, this course
is part of iCourts Excellence Programme (iEP) – International Law
and Courts in a Global World. Students who sign up for the iEP
become iCourts Student Fellows and will get a unique opportunity to
become part of the research environment of iCourts – the only
centre of excellence in law in Denmark. The iEP is open to all
Danish and foreign MA students at the Faculty. All iCourts courses
may be taken individually but only students who complete at least
three of the 15 ECTS courses offered by the centre will receive a
certificate confirming their participation in the iEP. Read more
about the programme:
http:/​​/​​jura.ku.dk/​​icourts/​​teaching-and-doctoral-training/​​master-excellence-programme/​​